Problems in Manuscript Reviewer Recommendation  

 

Generally speaking, many English journals require authors recommend two to five reviewers for their own manuscripts. I find several issues exist in the reviewer recommendation.

1. Don't know who to recommend 

Some authors, especially those who have never had their papers published in an English journals, feel difficult to recommend reviewers. So they ask the editors to choose reviewers for their manuscripts. Sure, the editors can try to find the suitable reviewers for all manscripts. But sometimes it may prolong the manuscript handling process if editors have to look for reviewers for all manuscripts. So it's better for the authors to recommend several reviewers closely related to the research fields of their papers.

In order to have one's manuscript to pass review, many authors only recommend their acquaintance as reviewers. If the reviewer is very familiar to your research and give pertinent comments and suggestions, then it's a good recommendsation. If the reviewer is not quite familiar to your research and give some irrelevant comments and suggestions, it will not helpful to your future research and development. If the reviewer is familiar to your research but still give high comments to your paper even he knows it's not worth it, it is harmful both to the journal and the author. So, I suggest authors recommend reviewers who they are not familiar to and who do research closely related to their research field. Then they can get objective comments and suggestions!

Some authors search by Google and casually select the reviewers from the internet. Internet is a good way to obtain the reviewer information. But it needs double checking whether the email address are still effective. One author recommended 3 reviewers for their manuscript, but I found two of them are no longer effective. I have to search the effective email address of the recommended reviewers (judged based on their institution and research fields)on the internet and then  have a try. It cost me lots of time for dealing with one manuscript.

建议：

１．如果期刊要求作者推荐审稿人，作者最好推荐，这样可以节省编辑处理稿件的时间，缩短稿件处理周期．中国作者最好推荐国外的审稿人（特别是英语国家的审稿人），审稿人还有可能能够从文字上对稿件进行修改润色．本刊也极力主张中国作者推荐英语国家的审稿人，或者以英语为工作语言的审稿人．

２．建议最好推荐与论文的研究领域密切相关的非熟人，这样可以得到非常中肯的意见和建议；

３．选取论文中最相关的关键词，从文献数据库（Springer, Elsevier）中搜索最相关的文献，根据通讯作者的信箱在网上搜索作者的相关信息，选取最合适的审稿人；另外,通过相关英文期刊的网站公布的编委信息查找审稿人也是一个不错的办法.

４．对通过熟人得到的或者是网上搜索到的审稿人邮箱地址和其它相关信息，最好进行认真核实，以免因审稿人信息不正确而影响稿件的送审．